HOW TO PROTECT YOUR SITE FROM 10 CRITICAL GOOGLE PENALTIES – ZIGIHOW.COM.NG
Everyone is afraid of Google penalties. Me too, I’m scared. Google algorithm penalty can keep your website doomed for life. Google penalties can be a costly problem especially when your site is removed from search engine, which can make your site loose search visibility and can negatively impact on your daily traffic and SEO at large. You wouldn’t like that right? So in this very article I’m going to detail out how to protect your site from 10 critical Google penalties, which can massively harm your blog.
What Is Google Penalty Anyway?
Google penalty is an action that Google takes against any website that goes against Google webmaster guidelines.
Google updates their algorithm to set new rules to detect sites going against their Webmaster guidelines.
Bad SEO practice such as black hat SEO techniques are the main reason why Google always update their algorithm to punish offenders.
What Is Google Algorithm?
Before we move ahead to what Google algorithm is. Let’s look at what algorithm itself means.
Algorithm is defined as a set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving. It is a set of instructions, typically to solve a class of problems or perform a computation, data processing and other tasks.
So what is Google algorithm? I guess the definition above gave you alittle clue to what Google algorithm is. Google algorithm is used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results.
Google uses numerous other criteria that change periodically to deliver more relevant results as well as to prevent people from gaming the system.
With the amount of information available on the web, finding what you need would be nearly impossible without some help sorting through it. Google ranking system “PageRank” does just that.
Google PageRank (PR) algorithm sorts through hundreds of billions of webpages in our Search index to find the most relevant, useful results in a fraction of a second, and present them in a way that helps you find exactly what you’re looking for.
Google uses a whole series of algorithms. To give you the most useful information, Search algorithms look at many factors, including the words of your query, relevance and usability of pages, expertise of sources, your location and settings.
Google updates their algorithms once or twice every month. Each algorithms updates comes with a thousands of changes.
In my previous article on white hat SEO and black hat SEO techniques. I made mention of two different Google penalties which are manual action penalty and algorithm penalty. You can read about black hat SEO and white hat SEO techniques and Google penalties.
Is My Site Penalized?
Google search console remains the only tool through which you can check if your site is penalized or not. It acts are penalty checker. When your site is hit by manual action penalty you’ll be notified on your Google search console account.
How Do I Check If My Site Is Hit By Google Manual Action penalty?.
Go-to your Google search console account, under security and manual actions, click on manual actions. If you have penalties, they will be listed along with the pages that are affected. If you have no Google penalties, you will see a green checkmark.
How Can If Fix Google Manual Action Penalties.
To fix Google manual penalties. You have to find the issue. See which pages are affected. See the type and short description of the issue, and follow the “Learn more” link to see detailed information and steps to fix the issue. Once the issue is fixed.
Then submit a review request using Google URL’s inspection tool. Once Google confirms that the issue is fixed, they will notify you of the resolution via your email
How Long Does Google Reconsideration Review Takes?
After fixing the issues and submit a review request to Google It normally takes days, weeks at most two weeks for Google to consider your review and they will notify you via email when they receive your request. You will also be informed via email when the review is complete.
10 Google Critical Penalties To Avoid
If you have received a manual action alert on your Google search console account. Then it means Google has found one or two of this issues on your site:
1 Unnatural Links To Your Site.
Google punishes sites that buys links or participate in link schemes all for the aim to gain backlinks. Google algorithm is so sophisticated that they can detect any manipulative, unnatural and artificial links pointing to your site.
And once any is detected. Your site is definitely going to be punished. Ensure to avoid buying backlinks, participating in link schemes and other forms of bad SEO practices, known as black hat SEO techniques.
In an article I wrote on things I wish I knew before going into Blogging. I gave a detailed explanation on how to gain high quality backlinks for your site to boost your site ranking and domain authority.
2 Unnatural Links From Your Site.
Avoid inserting irrelevant, unnatural and artificial links all for the aim to manipulate Google search engine. In my previous article on things I wish I knew before going into blogging. I also vividly explained how proper link inserting techniques can build your site’s authority and boost your SEO. But if links provides no value or attempt to game search engines, your site will likely be penalized.
3 Keyword Stuffing.
This is the act of writting little or thin contents and loading them with Keywords just to game search engines and rank high on search results. Can I tell you something? This practice is against not just Google but all search engines webmaster guidelines. And known as a black hat SEO techniques.
Google detects pages on your site, which are stuffed with Keywords, with targeted Keywords repeatedly mentioned numerous times for the aim of ranking with the term. Google will surely penalize your site if found guilty.
4 Writing Thin or Little Contents With No Added Value.
Trust me, with the massive advancement of Google algorithm. They can easily detect pages on your blog with low quality contents, automatically generated or scraped contents. Google’s main mission is to provide relevant and quality information to searchers. And in a case you provide low quality or Scrapped content articles with no added value. Then you’re inviting Google’s wrath.
5 Cloaking.
Cloaking is a deceitful, dishonest and an mendacious act. Where by a site shows one thing to visitors and another to search engines.
Example: A user searches form “10 richest celebrities” and when he clicks on the search results, he sees “Celebrities naked pictures”.
Google is strictly against this act and severely punishes offenders.
6 Sneaky Redirects.
On a normal circumstances, redirection are used to redirect users to another page if the resources has been moved or if the site has been moved to another domain.
But in a case whereby you insert links in your articles which redirects visitors to irrelevant pages. Then you’re incurring Google’s deadly wrath. Avoid such acts to avoid Google algorithm penalty.
7 Spam
Spamming blog comment sections and forums with your posts and links involved in an attempt to gain backlinks and traffics will land your site penalized by Google.
Google algorithmic rules is truculently against spam and will penalize any site found guilty.
8 AMP Content Mismatch
Google algorithm updates detects AMP pages that don’t match the original content. AMP pages in general should follow standard search guidelines.
According to AMP Google search guidelines. Visitors should be able to experience the same content and complete the same or similar actions on AMP pages as the original page.
9 Hidden Link.
This is a another deceitful practice very similar to cloaking, whereby using white text on a white background, hiding text behind an image, setting the font size to zero, or using CSS to position text off screen. Avoid these practices. Google is watching.
10 Structured Data Issue
Google sees structured data, or schema markup, that is misleading or manipulative.
The structured data may have content that is irrelevant or invisible to users which goes against Google’s structured data guidelines
Below are a few specific examples of structured data issues. Visit Google’s support page for the full list and descriptions.
- Content on the page is different from structured data
- Structured data was found on hidden content
- Specific data types violate Google guidelines; they are incorrect or misleading.
In Conclusion
Google’s mission is to satisfy their users by presenting suitable results to searchers. Google won’t tolerate any form of practice going against their guidelines. And will certainly get any site penalized if detected going against their algorithmic rules. Only engage in White SEO techniques Use bannedcheck or Webceo tool to check if your site is blacklisted by Google.
READ: SUBMIT YOUR WEBSITE & SITEMAP TO GOOGLE & BING WEBMASTER TOOLS FOR SEO OPTIMIZATION